Straight-line depreciation journal entries in QuickBooks Online Simple Start, Essentials and Plus

Intuit’s help is clear about which plans depreciate fixed assets: “Some QuickBooks Online subscription levels don’t automatically depreciate fixed assets (For Example, QuickBooks Online Simple Start, QuickBooks Online Essentials, and QuickBooks Online Plus). You’ll need to manually track depreciation using journal entries for them.” (Intuit: Set up an asset depreciation account, updated 10/26/2026.)

To be fair to Intuit: QuickBooks Online Advanced (and Intuit Enterprise Suite) has a Fixed assets feature that builds the depreciation schedule and posts the entries each month, with straight-line, double-declining and 150% methods. If you are on Advanced, use it.

The manual way in Simple Start, Essentials and Plus

Check your chart of accounts for an Accumulated Depreciation account (account type Fixed Assets) and a Depreciation expense account (type Other Expense). Create them if they are missing.
Work out the depreciation. Straight-line is (cost − salvage value) ÷ useful life, divided by 12 for a monthly charge, as Intuit’s fixed-asset article shows.
Select + Create, then Journal entry: credit Accumulated Depreciation, debit Depreciation, and save. Intuit notes you can do this at year-end after talking to your accountant.
Keep a spreadsheet of every asset’s cost, depreciation to date and net book value, because QuickBooks won’t track it per asset on these plans.

For monthly entries, Intuit’s amortization article suggests Make Recurring when “the amounts are going to always be the same”. Recurring transactions are only in Essentials, Plus and Advanced, so on Simple Start each entry is typed by hand (Intuit: plan feature limits). A recurring entry also has to be ended by hand when the asset is fully depreciated or sold.

What Periodline does

One row per asset in Periodline’s template (CSV or Excel): reference, cost, in-service date, useful life in months (or an end date), salvage value, the depreciation expense account and the accumulated depreciation account, by their QuickBooks account names.
Straight-line book depreciation, full-month convention: (cost − salvage) ÷ useful life in months, every month from the in-service month. Amounts are worked in cents, and the last month takes the rounding, so the total is exact.
Disposal: enter the disposal date in the CancelDate column, plus the asset (cost) account and a disposal account, such as a gain/loss on disposal account. Depreciation stops from the disposal month, and that month’s entry debits accumulated depreciation, debits the disposal account with the net book value and credits the asset account with the cost. Sale proceeds are not included; post them to the same disposal account yourself.
A QuickBooks Online journal entry import file with one balanced entry per month-end not yet posted, dated the last day of the month.
A posting record (CSV) that holds, per line, the month posted up to and what remains, so a rerun never posts the same month twice. If a line changes after months were posted, the difference is posted once as a catch-up adjustment that you confirm first.
A working paper in Excel and PDF: each balance sheet account rolled forward, next to the QuickBooks balance you type in, and the difference.
Runs in your browser. Your schedules are not uploaded, and Periodline never connects to QuickBooks.

To import, in QuickBooks Online go to Settings ⚙, then Import data, then Journal entries, choose the file and map the columns when QuickBooks asks. See the import format.

What it doesn’t do

It is book depreciation only, straight-line. It doesn’t do tax depreciation (MACRS) or accelerated methods; that stays with your tax preparer.
It doesn’t read assets from QuickBooks or post anything. You import the file and check the entries.

Try it on your own schedule. Free, no account or sign-up, nothing uploaded. The free plan covers one company: every line’s schedule and balances on screen, and the journal entry file, posting record and working paper for 3 lines. Standard ($19 per month or $190 per year) covers every line for up to 3 companies; Practice ($49 per month) covers unlimited companies: see pricing.

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Periodline is independent and not affiliated with or endorsed by Intuit. QuickBooks is a trademark of Intuit Inc. This guide was checked against the linked sources on 27 October 2026; Intuit changes its product, so check the current Intuit help article if a menu looks different.